Taylor Swift was won about every kind of award possible, from Grammys to Country Music Awards to MTV to Billboard Awards. Just this week, she was honored as one of the five CMT Artists of the Year, with her co-winners praised her for opening up the music genre to a whole new group of fans and acting as an ambassador of country music. The award was certainly a celebration, and to make it extra sweet, was broadcast on her birthday — the young sensation turned all of 22 years old December 13.
Now, call me crazy, but it seems Swift sure has a wisdom and poise far beyond her years, so let’s see what we can learn from her and maybe rub off a little bit of that charm and success on ourselves. Or, as I like to say, “Everything I needed to know about life I learned from Taylor Swift.”
On love
“I haven’t had that one great love, which is good. I don’t want that to be in the past — I want it to be in the future.”
On music
“Music is my shining light, my favorite thing in the world. To get me to stop doing it for one second would be difficult!”
On success
“I am an over-achiever, and I want to be known for the good things in my life.”
On finding Mr. Right
“When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he’s everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he’s not easy to spot; he’s really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.”
On friendship
“All you need to do to be my friend is like me.”
On being a role model
“For everything I do, I think about a 6-year-old girl and her mom that I saw at my concert last night. I think about what those two individuals would think if I were at a club last night. I never want to be arrested, and I never want to get a DUI, those are my moral values.”
On being treated mean
“I was the girl who didn’t get invited to parties. My friends turned into the girls who stood in the corner and talked about me. But as soon as I picked up a guitar…I literally played until my fingers bled. My mom had to tape them up, and you can imagine how popular that made me: ‘Look at her fingers. So weird.’ But for the first time in my life, those girls could say anything they wanted about me, because I was just going to go home after school and write a song about it.”
On growing old
“I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blond when I’m 60!”
Is it any wonder this singer and songwriter has seen so much success? Take a few lessons here, Lindsay!
